Usage of the terms Walser and Walliser has come to reflect a difference of geography, rather than language. The term Walser may refer to any speaker of these dialects, whereas Walliser tends to refer only to a speaker from Upper Valais – that is, the upper Rhone valley. In a series of migrations during the Late Middle Ages, people migrated out of the Upper Valais, across the higher valleys of the Alps.

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History

The Alemannic immigration to the Rhone valley started in the 8th century. There were presumably two different immigration routes, from what is now the Bernese Oberland, that led to two main groups of Walliser dialects.
In the 12th or 13thcentury, the Walliser began to settle other parts of the Alps.[4] These new settlements are known as Walser migration. In many of these settlements, people still speak Walser.

Because the people who speak Walser German live in the isolated valleys of the high mountains, Walser German has preserved certain archaisms retained from Old High German which were lost in other variants of German.[4] The dialect of the Lötschental, for instance, preserved three distinct classes of weak verbs until the beginning of the 20th century.[clarification needed]

Walser German dialects are considered endangered, and language shift to the majority language (Italian, German) has taken place in the course of the later 20th century.[3]

There is limited mutual intelligibility with High Alemannic forms of Swiss German (whose speakers are called Üsserschwyzer "outer Swiss" by the Walliser), and barely any mutual intelligibility with Standard German.

Distribution and dialects

The total number of speakers in the world estimated at 22,000 speakers (as of 2004), of whom about 10,000 are in Switzerland.[5]
Because the dialect group is quite spread out, there is rarely any contact between the dialects. Therefore, the dialects that compose Walser German are very different from each other as well.[3]
Specific Walser dialects can be traced to eastern or western dialects of the Upper Valais. Conservative Walser dialects are more similar to the respective groups of Wallis dialects than to neighboring Walser dialects.

Phonology

Because the dialects of Walser German are different from each other, it is difficult to make generalizations about the language that applies to all the dialects. This section will be about the Walser German dialect of Formazza, or Pomattertitsch. Pomattertitsch is part of the Highest Alemannic German (höchstalemannisch) dialect group, which is made up of dialects that share similar features. The Highest Alemannic German group contains German dialects of Valais; Walser German dialects in Italy and Ticino; and eastern Walser German dialects in Grisons, Vorarlberg, and Liechtenstein. The first feature that is shared by this group is the palatalization of Middle High German (MHG) -s- to -sch-. This is actually really typical of Walser German dialects in general. For Pomattertitsch, however, this doesn't apply to every word that contains -s-: su 'son', sunna 'sun', and si 'to be'. The second feature is a change from -nk- to -ch- or -h-: German denken to Pomattertitsch teche 'think', German trinken to Pomattertitsch triche 'drink'. The final feature is the lack of diphthongs where they are present in German words: German bauen to Pomattertitsch büwe 'build', German schneien to Pomattertitsch schnie 'snow'.[4]

Morphology

Again, this section will be about the Walser German dialect Pomattertitsch.

Nouns

Pomattertitsch marks number (singular and plural) and gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) on nouns, like most dialects of German. It also marks case (nominative/accusative, genitive, dative) on nouns, although it has been reduced over time. It also distinguishes between strong and weak nouns, which is becoming blurred over time as well.

Adjectives also agree in number, and gender with the noun it is modifying in Pomattertitsch. For adjectives in the attributive position, there is also agreement in strong versus weak nouns, and in case.

In Pomattertitsch, there is a distinction between impersonal and personal pronouns. The impersonal pronoun is mu, which is third person singular. The personal pronouns agree in number and case, with third person agreeing in gender as well for singular pronouns only.

The two classes that are most productive are three and four. The third class is most productive in deriving verbs from nouns, and the fourth class is most productive in deriving loan-words from Italian.[4]

In Pomattertitsch, a 'dummy' auxiliary tö 'do' followed by the infinitive form of a verb is common for the present indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. This insertion has the same meaning as if the verb was to be conjugated normally: ich tö zellä 'I do speak/I speak'.[4]

There is not a preterite form in Pomattertitsch. Instead, past tense is expressed using the present perfect, which is formed with auxiliaries 'to be' and 'to have' followed by the past participle. On the other hand, the future tense is expressed morphologically by adding the particle de at the end of an inflected verb and after enclitic pronouns, if there are any in the sentence.[4]

The passive is expressed in Pomattertitsch by using the auxiliary cho 'come' followed by the past participle of the verb, which agrees in gender and number with the subject of the sentence: der salam chun röwä gässä 'salami is eaten raw'. The causative is expressed using tö 'do' followed by the agent of the caused event, then the preposition z (separate word, not morpheme), and then the infinitive: und töt ds metjie z ässä 'and he makes the girl eat'. The imperative is expressed most commonly by using tö 'do' plus the infinitive, as stated above: tö frägä! 'do ask, ask!'. Another way is the bare indicative stem for the singular form, and the same present indicative form for the plural: zel titsch, dü! 'speak German, you!' and chomet hier! 'come (pl) here!'.[4]

There are two different subjunctive forms used in Pomattertitsch. The first form is used mainly in reported speech and in subordinate clauses that follow 'say' or 'think'. It also occurs in complement clauses that follow das 'that'. The second form is used for the conditional mood, where the conjunction wenn 'if' can be omitted without changing the meaning of the sentence.[4]

Syntax

The Walser German dialect group has the same word order as German, for the most part. For some dialects, however, there is a change occurring in the word order of verbal brace constructions. In German, the finite verb occurs in the second position, and the non-finite verb occurs in the final position:[7]

Peter hat vorhin den Ball ins Tor geworfen

Peter has just now the ball into the goal thrown

'Peter threw the ball into the goal just now'

In some dialects, specifically Gressoney, Formazza, and Rimella, the finite and non-finite verbs occur right next to each other, with the complements and adverbials at the end of the sentence. An example of this in Rimella is given below:[7]

de pappa òn d mamma heingmacht ds chriz dem chénn

the father and the mother have made the cross to the child

'The father and mother made a cross for the child'

This is a change from SOV (subject, object, verb) to SVO word order. This change is due to the increasing influence of Italian on Walser German. However, the SOV word order is still used when there is negation and when there is an inverted subject.[7]

Some southern dialects of Walser German are starting to omit the subject pronoun of sentences, just having the inflection on the verb to indicate what the subject is. This phenomenon is known as pro-dropping, and is common among languages. Italian is a pro-drop language, and German is not,[8] which means that Italian is influencing some southern dialects of Walser German.[7]

« My grand father came from Gaby, my grand mother from Issime, from hamlet Praz. Stévenin was the father, the grand mother came from the Chémonal family. [...] The pasture [in the Bourines Valley] probably belonged to my grand father. I don't know whether he was from my father's side. It belonged to my family, they had a beautiful house in Gaby. Victor, my father, was from his lineage, his father, my grand father, came from over there... Victor le gabençois. Later he had a son, to whom he gave his name, so that my father's name was Victor too. He then got married when he was 56, and he had four sisters, two of them got married and two did not. They always worked and lived with him. Later one of them died. »

^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstDal Negro, Silvia (2004). The Decay of a Language: the Case of a German Dialect in the Italian Alps. European Academic Publishers. pp. 38–39, 82–83, 84–86, 88, 90–91, 92–98. ISBN3-03910-212-5.